Asa Marcey’s job was to clean up after the scientists working in #NIH Building 5, making sure that everything was ready for experiments each day. In the evening, he would go home to Arlington, Virginia where he lived with his wife, one of his three daughters, his son-in-law, and his three grandchildren. He had served his country during World War I, even though he had been born in 1880 and was 38 during the war. In the spring of 1940, scientists at NIH were beginning to study Q fever, a disease caused by the bacterium Coxiella burnetii. People can get infected by inhaling it or coming into contact with the bodily fluids of infected animals. Most infections are not severe. During ten years of research on Q fever at NIH, some 80 laboratory workers and other staff would come down with it. Marcey was the only one who died, just at the beginning of the studies, on April 25, 1940.